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ARCADIA: SOUND OF THE SEA,
National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, 14 August - 19 October 2014, &, Geelong Gallery, Geelong, 29 November - 22 February 2015, &, Tweed River Art Gallery, Tweed Heads, 2 October - 15 November 2015,
John Witzig’s new book “A Golden Age: Surfing's Revolutionary 1960s and '70s is a treasure trove of rare and poignant imagery in and around the Surfboard Revolution: McTavish,... [MORE]

ARCADIA: SOUND OF THE SEA,
National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, 14 August - 19 October 2014, &, Geelong Gallery, Geelong, 29 November - 22 February 2015, &, Tweed River Art Gallery, Tweed Heads, 2 October - 15 November 2015,
John Witzig’s new book “A Golden Age: Surfing's Revolutionary 1960s and '70s is a treasure trove of rare and poignant imagery in and around the Surfboard Revolution: McTavish, barefoot beside a '50s-era Holden, checking an empty Noosa Heads in 1965; Greenough flirting with the line on 4'9" kneeboard at Angourie in 1966; Nat Young's game-changing bottom turn at Honolua in 1967; and a young Reno Abellira literally standing between his snapped Brewer pintail and a lopped McTavish V-bottom -- figuratively straddling the line between Then and Now.A Golden Age: Surfing's Revolutionary 1960s and '70s is a treasure trove of rare and poignant imagery in and around the Surfboard Revolution: McTavish, barefoot beside a '50s-era Holden, checking an empty Noosa Heads in 1965; Greenough flirting with the line on 4'9" kneeboard at Angourie in 1966; Nat Young's game-changing bottom turn at Honolua in 1967; and a young Reno Abellira literally standing between his snapped Brewer pintail and a lopped McTavish V-bottom -- figuratively straddling the line between Then and Now.”
Andrew Lewis. Surfline.com
John Witzig got lucky when some of his friends got famous. He was hanging around surfing in Australia with the right people at the right time.
He contributed his first piece to Surfing World in 1963 and later worked full-time for the magazine In 1966 he produced the pivotal New Era issue that documented for the first time the rapid changes in performance and equipment taking place in surfing and being lead by the Australians. After Nat Young's win at the World Championships in San Diego in 1967 he wrote "We're Tops" Now for the American publication Surfer an article later described as splendidly inflammatory.
He went on to edit Surf International for Gareth Powell, found Tracks in 1970 with Albe Falzon and David Elfick, Sea Notes in 1977, and contribute occasionally to American magazines.
“Witzig took the defining Australian images of the period with an artful eye, incorporating grain and texture to capture the aesthetic as well as athletic prowess. Those decades were a time of revelation, emergence, and revolution, the sport at large being still naïve to a foreboding that surfing’s elite cultish status would soon dissolve, obliterated by waves of overpopulation and exploitation. Thus, the images take on a special poignancy.”
Steve Pezman
Publisher
The Surfer’s Journal
see www.johnwitzig.com